


Somewhere to begin

by ferggirl



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen, Prequel, and a bit of Tommy, before the pilot, but this is all about Laurel, there's a hint of Quentin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-23
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-24 08:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferggirl/pseuds/ferggirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She finds a balance, a way to hold the darkness at bay by creating light. </p>
<p>Laurel in the missing years before the Pilot. One-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere to begin

**Author's Note:**

> I’m working on a chapter that involves Laurel and she’s been a real hangup for me. I don’t know anything about her in the comics, and on the show she’s written all over the map and doesn’t give me much inspiration. This is me trying to find my Laurel.
> 
> This is also for Abbie, who went to bed on time. ;)

It’s been a long five years.

The betrayal, the anger, the unutterable loneliness and grief. Each a layer of scar tissue that squeezes her heart and makes her every breath painful. Laurel Lance doesn’t know how to choose which one to feel.

For her father, at least, the choice is clear. He is full of hate for anyone named Queen. She wonders, sometimes, if he hasn’t decided that Sarah was kidnapped, dragged onto that yacht against her will. If he thinks they’d wanted Laurel but taken Sarah instead. She hears him howling in the shower, as if his fury could reach across the water and bring her sister home.

They both learn to bury themselves in work. She aces law school, her only distractions the pain and the occasional night out. She has one horribly mistaken hookup with Tommy Merlyn when she’s just drunk enough to let herself be angry. Angry at Oliver for lying, for cheating, for leaving. And angry at Sarah for going. And Tommy has such sweet eyes and extremely clever hands.

It’s a long night and she wakes up the next morning feeling amazing. For thirty blissful seconds, she isn’t thinking about Oliver or Sarah or her father or a yacht off the coast of China. She’s warm and well-used, and totally content.

And then it rushes back with the force of a punch to the gut. She stumbles out of bed and finds her clothes silently. With each layer, she feels the numbness return. She welcomes it like armor.

He calls, sometimes. Texts more. Never pushy, never clingy. No, Tommy Merlyn is glib and clever, even if his eyes are kind. She doesn’t ignore him completely, but it doesn’t happen again.

She graduates, and has offers from the top law firms in the city. Her father pushes her to talk to the D.A., but she comes away feeling empty. She takes a law firm job, 80 hours a week and no time to think. She revels in that schedule. Her father complains, cajoles, bargains, but she smiles and practices her evasive maneuvers in 4-inch stilettos.

She’s there for six months, adding to her layers of protective scar tissue, crafting her armor. A law professor contacts her and asks if she might have time over the holidays to help pull a pro-bono institution into the 20th century. She says no.

Two days into her week of vacation, she’s going mad. Her father keeps baking. The shower leaks. She can’t sleep. So she calls the woman back and says yes.

There’s a bitterness around her edges, a suspicion of intent and motive. She catches herself reading the charter of CNRI and laughing, rolling her eyes at the section that proclaims “everyone deserves the chance to have their story heard.”

Her own reaction sickens her. She shuts herself in the bathroom and threatens her father with her shotgun when he suggests that he could just pick the lock. The gun is under her bed and he knows it. That’s probably the only reason he leaves her alone. She curls under the shower until the tears stop, and she’s not really sure if she’s crying because of what she’s lost or what she’s become. The water is the chilly side of lukewarm by the time she forces herself to stand and find a towel.

She sits in her room, naked under her towel, her wet hair dripping down the back of her neck, and she researches. One by one, she finds the stories of the last 10 cases that CNRI argued in court. Accused drug dealer (17 year old boy, first arrest, claimed a friend left the stash in his backpack, tried as an adult; 5 years in prison); grand theft auto (32 year old woman, third arrest, priors for shoplifting once and aggravated assault on a coworker, two children ages 4 and 10, said the car was lent to her by the plaintiff; 7 years prison); assault (55 year old man, repeat offender, claimed it was self defense and the young man was vandalizing his storefront; $10,000 fine, community service). And on and on.

CNRI doesn’t win, not often. She knows the statistics, knows the probability of wrongful conviction is only 0.5-1%. But what if one of these faces is that one in 100?

For the first time in two and a half years, she feels something. She catches herself taking a deep breath, really filling her lungs as a reaction to that sharp tug on her heart. Both sensations feel so foreign that she closes the computer and goes to sleep determined to forget about it.

She wakes up the next morning and quits her job.

By mid-January she’s an associate at CNRI, and by mid-April she’s a junior partner. Her bosses say they’ve never seen anyone get the results she can, she tells them that’s why she came to work for them. CNRI starts winning small victories. Shorter sentences, reduced fines, sealed records. 

She never cries again. No one at work mentions her sister, or Oliver Queen. She listens to every single person whose case she is assigned. Really listens. At first, it’s because she wants to win, and you don’t win cases without understanding the person you’re defending. But it’s only a matter of time before a troubled teenager with blond hair and a bad attitude walks through her door.

Every gesture is like her sister, but not. The way she wears her hair is wrong. Her lipstick is off. And yet it cuts Laurel to ribbons each time she has to interview the girl. With her heart bleeding, something slips in. This time she listens, and she cares.

And she wins that case.

She locks away her memories of before, tucked like a shoebox in a dark corner of her heart, and rearranges her armor. She makes lasagna again, and calls Tommy back. She goes to a baseball game with her father.

And she keeps winning cases.

She finds a balance, a way to hold the darkness at bay by creating light. She stops flinching at the Queen name, and on Sarah’s birthday she and her father get drunk together. She might even be happy.

She’s made her peace and it’s time to live again.


End file.
